This country rules that only numb or brain-dead lobsters can be boiled alive

Switzerland is cracking down on the culinary practice of tossing live lobsters into boiling water – so chefs will now have to adopt the more humane act of stunning them first, according to reports.

As part of a wider overhaul of Swiss animal-protection laws, as of March 1, “the practice of plunging live lobsters into boiling water, which is common in restaurants, is no longer permitted.”

Lobsters “will now have to be stunned before they are put to death,” according to the government order, Agence France-Presse reported.

And only electric shock or the “mechanical destruction” of the lobster’s brain will be accepted methods of stunning the creatures once the new rules take effect.

In 2013, a study in the Journal of Experimental Biology found that crabs and lobsters likely feel pain for several seconds after being thrown into boiling water, the International Business Times reported.

An experiment has found that crabs were willing to give up their dark hideaways after receiving electric shocks, said Bob Elwood of Queen’s University Belfast.

“They were willing to give up their hideaway in order to avoid the source of their probable pain,” he told IBTimes.

But the Lobster Institute in Maine claims the crustaceans do not feel pain because their nervous systems are primitive, comparable to that of an insect.

“For an organism to perceive pain it must have a complex nervous system. Neurophysiologists tell us that lobsters, like insects, do not process pain,” according to the institute.